Are you more likely to write protagonists who have something in common with you?

[EmilyMiller]

I’m the worst person to answer this. If you look up author injection, you get my avatar .

But when creating an MMC / FMC, are you more likely to imbue them with some of your own personality and / or some of your own preoccupations, or the opposite. Or do you try to reflect aspects of other people in your circle?

Em

 

[onehitwanda]

All my characters are lonely to some degree or another. I don't set out to make them that way so I guess that's my own life colouring them.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I'd say yeah. My MCs reflect some of my personality, world views and values.

Btw, it took you long enough to come up with your daily new topic. Slacking much?

 

[EmilyMiller]

All my characters are lonely to some degree or another. I don't set out to make them that way so I guess that's my own life colouring them.

I’ve just written a piece in which the FMC is lonely. Although the setting is fantastical, it occurred to me that it reflected my feelings when moving state after college.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I'd say yeah. My MCs reflect some of my personality, world views and values.

Btw, it took you long enough to come up with your daily new topic. Slacking much?

I am a slovenly girl and must be taught better ways.

Em

 

[EmilyMiller]

I am a slovenly girl and must be taught better ways.

Em

That and work is busy.

Em

 

[Zenith77]

A lot of my recent works have been female POV, female MCs. So no... but they've all had male characters (sometimes quite minor roles) that do reflect me. We write what we know, right? Except when we deliberately don't, for the challenge.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I am a slovenly girl and must be taught better ways.

Em

I'll let it slide... this time.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I'll let it slide... this time.

[insert flirtatious innuendo here later when I can think of one]

Em

 

[EmilyMiller]

A lot of my recent works have been female POV, female MCs. So no... but they've all had male characters (sometimes quite minor roles) that do reflect me. We write what we know, right? Except when we deliberately don't, for the challenge.

When I have written MMCs, there has always been some small element of me in their character, or dialog, maybe nothing significant. I mostly notice it proof-reading, but sometimes if I re-read a story at a later date. It’s not a concious decision, but seems to be something I do.

Em

 

[Djmac1031]

I think there's always a little part of me in my male characters, especially my leads.

That's not to say any of my stories are autobiographical. Far from it.

But I'm always in there somewhere, lurking beneath the surface of the fiction I've created around them.

 

[Zenith77]

I think there's always a little part of me in my male characters, especially my leads.

That's not to say any of my stories are autobiographical. Far from it.

But I'm always in there somewhere, lurking beneath the surface of the fiction I've created around them.

Yeah, this. They often reflect my attitudes, for example.

 

[EmilyMiller]

When I have written MMCs, there has always been some small element of me in their character, or dialog, maybe nothing significant. I mostly notice it proof-reading, but sometimes if I re-read a story at a later date. It’s not a concious decision, but seems to be something I do.

Em

But there’s never any element of me in my FMCs of course

Em

 

[Zootonius]

I have one young character that has something of my nineteen-year-old self. But I tend to imbue the young guy with with some of my several decades of experience. It's the fun of the genre, even if it's a bit unrealistic.

 

[CockSparrow]

I think some resemblance is almost inevitable. When I ask myself: How would this character react in this situation? it's my own brain that answers.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I've got a lot of snarky overeducated types. Not all - sometimes I'll start with a look or a voice or a job or a place, add bits of various people I've ever met or seen on TV, stir around.

I'm not an immortal genderless hellbeing who feeds on thoughts, at all. Drat. OK, yes I'm a genderless sarcastic being who wanders round London and complains lots of it has got horribly soulless in recent years. But I haven't destroyed anyone's brain for my dinner. Not to my knowledge, anyway.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I’m uncertain. I’ve written characters who were barely of age and others who were much older. (Working on one now which puts the MMC firmly in the ‘elderly’ camp.) I’ve written male and female. I’ve done poor and rich. I’ve introduced the delightfully sane and the colossally messed up. I’ve highlighted the generous and good as well as the misanthropic. I’ve done cops, civilians, soldiers and pilots, vets, engineers, artists, musicians, students, writers, fishermen, mermaids, executives, investors, gods, demons, bi and straight, sales clerks and senior VPs, citizens and politicians.

I’m not sure I could spread myself that thin. So, i guess, no.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I’m uncertain. I’ve written characters who were barely of age and others who were much older. (Working on one now which puts the MMC firmly in the ‘elderly’ camp.) I’ve written male and female. I’ve done poor and rich. I’ve introduced the delightfully sane and the colossally messed up. I’ve highlighted the generous and good as well as the misanthropic. I’ve done cops, civilians, soldiers and pilots, vets, engineers, artists, musicians, students, writers, fishermen, mermaids, executives, investors, gods, demons, bi and straight, sales clerks and senior VPs, citizens and politicians.

I’m not sure I could spread myself that thin. So, i guess, no.

My 60-something widower had elements of me . Given he goes on to fuck, well me, is that self-love ?

Em

 

[Rob_Royale]

Absolutely. My male protagonists, will usually not be the tall hunk. They would be shorter, more cute than handsome, as that's the compliment I got more often as a young man. Dark hair and eyes with an athletic medium build like I was. Now I'm more like, dad bod with muscles. I'm 54 but I can still sling an 85 lb. hay bale.

 

[SimonDoom]

To a significant degree, yes. But with a caveat. My main characters, whether male or female, are likely to represent to some degree a fantasy projection of myself, so they may think, talk, and act in some ways as I would in a similar situation (or perhaps as I like to think I would), but in most cases they're probably doing something I've never actually done.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My 60-something widower had elements of me . Given he goes on to fuck, well me, is that self-love ?

Em

I had fun in my first (well, so far, only) Mickey Spillane story, When It's Safe to Die, where I had the hard-boiled private eye (basically me, in a 1940s hat, driving an old Ford) get it on with a younger man who to all intents and purposes was the twenty year old me, tall, blond and blue-eyed, with a faint English accent.

I was deliberately subverting the noir genre, making the leading man bi, to see what effect it would have on readers, with a GM scene right in the middle, instead of a hetero one. About 0.25, score wise, I reckon, and this comment:

I found it a bit much with the male bisexual element though. Not my cup of tea. The rest - well what can I say? This was well written, on point, and certainly captivating

- and slung me a five, despite his misgivings.

The rest of the story was more typical me, with a leading lady borrowed from three 21st century stories, wearing a tight red dress and a pill box hat.

The male sex scene was a cinch to write, being me on me, knowing what I like. Which was curious, because I've never been with another man. So yes, self love, it's a thing .

 

[neuroparenthetical]

I have tremendous difficulty writing characters - especially narrators - who aren't thinkers. I've been repeatedly - and sometimes rather viciously - accused of being that in my real life, so there you go.

I can't even plead special circumstances, because other authors I've read are REALLY good at writing compelling characters who eschew contemplation and reflection, but aren't necessarily "shallow" or "dumb" (although sometimes they are.)

I have no problem writing characters who are different from me in basically every other way you can imagine. A person who just acts, goes with their gut, puts feels over reals, cares naught for hypocrisy, doesn't reflect, doesn't contemplate, doesn't Prufrock the frocky frock? Don't like it, not good at it. I have a feeling that if I tried to push it, I'd end up writing bitter parodies of those types of characters. The story itself would become little more than a screed against them. "Oh hey, Dumbass McGee's fucking his sister again, golly gee, what a stud. Derp derp derp. He's such a corn-fed catch; who cares if his daddy was leaded gasoline?"

 

[PeytonMirabelle]

Many of my protagonists are damaged or trying to figure out difficult facets of their life.

Make of that what you will.

 

[CyranoJ]

I’m the worst person to answer this. If you look up author injection, you get my avatar .

But when creating an MMC / FMC, are you more likely to imbue them with some of your own personality and / or some of your own preoccupations, or the opposite. Or do you try to reflect aspects of other people in your circle?

Em

I need them to be relatable, and I will often draw on my experience for that. This may not necessarily mean infusing them with my personality or preoccupations (characters who had my real-life personality would simply not do a lot of the shit that happens in my pervy stories), but if often does mean infusing them with elements of people I have known or what I imagine to be true about people I know only remotely, but whom I like or at least find positive aspects about. I'm nerdy and a bit of a hipster in my earlier life, so my protags are sometimes (but not always) nerdy or hipsters of some kind: it's easy to inhabit characters like that and flesh them out more-or-less authentically. But I don't have a problem with writing very different kinds of protags, either.

 

[KeithD]

I've had stage training, so, with me, it's mostly a case of me "becoming" the protagonist with whatever personality attributes I want the protagonist to have. I don't think of that character as being a projection of me in any way but I also don't intentionally avoid that.